Oct 10 2007
What is Politics and Funk
Politics & Funk is a celebration of the postmodern political spirit, or the lack thereof. Today, America is embattled in a vicious partisan war that will decide the direction it will evolve over the next decade. Fresh off eight years of GOP rule, the Democratic party has grown legs and is making a spirited run at the White House. Meanwhile, despite widespread unpopularity, Republican strategists seem eerily confident that they will conquest in 2008 and cement the doctrine of conservatism in the American ethos.
The byproduct of such a conflict is a political landscape chock-full of fire-breathing, chest-pounding, pill-popping hacks, whose relentless desire to accumulate power and disseminate propaganda has the potential to send our nation spiraling into the apocalypse. If left unchecked, they will ravage America’s spirit with a barrage of self righteous proclamations so grotesque that even the dead and buried will blush.
Who, if anyone, can provide an antidote to this onslaught of paranoid gruel?
This answer, quite obviously, is not encapsulated in a mortal man, but does exist in the spirit of those whose efforts while alive left us a legacy of hip-jiving, thigh smacking, ass slapping, unadulterated funk.
Funk, in the spirit of Walt Whitman, whose funk- filled prosody heralded Lincoln, immortalized pure Americana, and shot forth a thousand funky disciples to “shout their barbaric yawps from the rooftops of the world.”
Funk, in the essence of Henry David Thoreau, who went to the woods to cultivate his own funkiness, returned to find society plagued by a terrible lack of funk, and famously proclaimed that he’d rather inhabit “a (funky) pumpkin alone than be crowded on a velvet cushion,” sans funk.
Funk, in the legacy of Hendrix, who lived for funk, fought for funk, wailed for funk, dropped acid for funk, and eventually drugged himself to death with the fleeting hope that his funk would be an inspiration to the world.
Funk, in the memory of Jesus Christ, who spread the tenets of funk, before being crucified for his unnatural inclination to funk, and then rose in prophecy of funk, only to proclaim his funkiness once and again.
Funk in remembrance of Rick James, whose funk was utterly seductive, whose funk was conquered only by James Brown, who was the funkiest funk prophet of all time, outside of Kerouac, who never knew funk but only bled it.
It is dawn in Denver now, and I’ve got C-SPAN blasting second only to the speaker in the corner. The volume is perfect. I can barely make out the squawking of the pundits below the raw rumble of my bass. The mountains are covered in smog, but there is clarity somewhere on the horizon. There is salvation, and it lies within the spirit of this song.
Politics & Funk is committed to framing the American political process in a manner which is not conducive to nausea. Through the provision of political editorials packed with percussion and style, we seek to punctuate the informative with the melodic, the formulaic with the rhythmically supreme. Hopefully, the result will engage and enlighten, so kick back, gyrate, swivel, and breathe in the heady fumes.